The precise date of Wishart's return to Scotland is very doubtful. Knox, ([supra, page 125],) places it in 1544, but joins this with an explanation which might carry it back to July 1543, and with the defeat of the Governor, which belongs to a later period. Mr. Tytler, (Hist. vol. v. p. 343,) says, "From the time of his arrival in the summer of 1543, for more than two years Wishart appears to have remained in Scotland, protected by the barons who were then in the interest of Henry, and who favoured the doctrines of the Reformation." Yet nevertheless, according to Mr. Tytler, and later authorities, he was employed as a messenger in May 1544, conveying letters from Crichton of Brunstone to the Earl of Hertford at Newcastle, and from thence, with other letters, to Henry the Eighth, in relation to a projected scheme devised by the Laird of Brunstone for the assassination of Cardinal Beaton; and after having had an interview with the King at Greenwich, returning first to Newcastle, and then to Scotland. This employment—which has been held up as a notable discovery—proceeds upon the fact of "a Scotishman, called Wyshart," being mentioned as the bearer of the letters referred to; and the Laird of Brunstone having been Wishart's "great friend and protector," in 1546, hence it is concluded that the person employed was George Wishart the Martyr. Among the Wisharts of that time the name of George was not peculiar to him. George Wischart was one of the bailies of Dundee, 3d May 1560, and for several years previously; and in the Protocol book of Thomas Ireland, notary public in Dundee, belonging to that borough, I observed the copy of a deed, in which "Georgius Wischart, frater-germanus Joannis Wischart de Pettarrow," was one of the procurators in a matter concerning "Georgius Wischart, armiger Crucis regis Galliæ," 14th June 1565.
Now, in reply to the above argument, I beg to remark, that there is no certain evidence of George Wishart having returned to Scotland earlier than 1544 or 1545; that if the name of George Wishart had been specified in the letters, there were other persons of that name who might equally have been employed in such services; and that if it had been ascertained beyond all doubt that he possessed a full knowledge of the plots against Beaton devised by Crichton of Brunstone, even then, according to the terms of the Earl of Hertford's letter, and confirmed by the letter in reply from the English Council, the attempt was to be confined to the arrestment of the Cardinal, while passing through Fife—the proposal of sleeing him, having been suggested only as an alternative, in case of necessity.
But to say nothing of the uncongenial nature of the employment, to a man such as described by his devoted pupil Emery Tylney, who had been under his tuition at Cambridge, for twelve months, in 1543, it may further be urged,—
1. That Wishart had no occasion to entertain a personal animosity to the Cardinal; and that being denounced, or put to the horn, and liable to summary arrestment and execution, he could not have undertaken the task at such a time, of carrying letters and messages between the conspirators.
2. That the plots against Beaton being well known, even to the Cardinal himself, if Wishart had in any way been concerned in them, it would unquestionably have formed a leading accusation against him in his trial,—but no allusion to such a charge was ever whispered.
And lastly,—That the actual enterprise, by which the Castle of St. Andrews was taken, and the Cardinal murdered, on the 29th of May, was in a great measure a scheme hastily arranged and executed, mainly in revenge of the Martyr's own fate, and altogether unconnected and uninfluenced by any former plots devised by Crichton of Brunstone, but which have been employed to implicate the irreproachable character of George Wishart.
No. X.
JOHN ROUGH.